NEW DELHI: BJP leader SS Ahluwalia's defeat in the Jharkhand Rajya Sabha poll seems to have deepened the unrest in the party. A section of leaders have held chief minister Arjun Munda and even the central leadership responsible for the defeat.

A day after Congress and JMM candidates made it to the Upper House, senior party leaders pondered over reasons why BJP could not manage the required numbers. "I feel efforts were made but may be more efforts were required," senior leader Yashwant Sinha said. However, he said he would refrain from reacting on the results as he had not spoken to Ahluwalia then.

What has irked BJP is that it could not even manage votes of independents - Chamra Linda and Bidesh Singh - who support the BJP-JMM coalition government in Jharkhand. Ahluwalia lost by three votes while JMM's candidate got 23, the required number for winning. The two MLAs and five other independents had voted for Congress candidate Pradip Kumar Balmuchu, who secured 25 votes. The total strength of the JMM-BJP alliance is 45 in the 81-member House. BJP and JMM have 18 legislators each.

BJP parliamentary party chief LK Advani, Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and party leaders Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Ananth Kumar, who was sent by the central leadership as an observer for the polls, had a discussion on the issue on Friday.

While BJP's defeat is unlikely to destabilise the Arjun Munda government, if JMM had lost the election it may have cast a shadow on the ruling coalition. JMM had hinted at this last week when it asked BJP to withdraw its candidate from the fray.

Ahluwalia, who was the party's deputy leader in the House, had earlier been denied a ticket.